Goya: The Portraits

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To celebrate Credit Suisse's sponsorship of the landmark exhibition 'Goya: The Portraits' at the National Gallery in London, the bank is exploring the lives of the artist's subjects through mobile technology.

Central to Credit Suisse's support of the National Gallery – a collaboration that began in 2008 – is widening access to the arts, and a striking hoarding in Trafalgar Square, displaying a selection of Goya's portraits, is attracting the attention of passers-by.

From the artists who influenced him to his self imposed exile in France, Curator Letizia Treves sheds some light on the fascinating life of this most important Spanish painter.

THE CURATOR'S STORY

Bringing Goya: The Portraits to The National Gallery was a 15 year labour of love for Curator Xavier Bray. Hear the story of this landmark exhibition and why it was so important to stage it.

The hoarding encourages you to 'bring Goya's portraits to life using your smartphone'. Users photograph Goya’s subjects displayed on the hoarding; image-recognition technology then generates exclusive audio guides about the sitters.

Each minute-long audio guide has been created by Credit Suisse to mark the first exhibition to focus solely on Goya's portraits, with the show running from 7 October 2015 until 10 January 2016. Once an audio guide has finished, the listener has the option of replaying it, exploring a different portrait, or finding out more about Credit Suisse’s partnership with the National Gallery.

This formidable-looking woman is Maria Antonia Gonzaga de Caracciolo, the Dowager Marchioness of Villafranca. At around the time Goya painted her in 1795 she was sixty years old and had been widowed for almost two decades. But she was evidently still interested in fashion, even if it was a little out of date. Her crimped and frizzed hairdo was a style that had been all the rage in Spain a decade earlier. It is clear The Dowager Marchioness was content with her look, however, and in sitting for Goya, she appears to have been fully conscious of her senior position within one of the best-connected aristocratic families in late 18th century Spain.

The National Gallery’s exhibition gathers many of her illustrious relatives. Along with the Dowager Marchioness herself you can meet her daughter, the Duchess of Altamira, her son, the Duke of Alba and her fabulously wealthy and powerful daughter-in-law, the Duchess of Alba – the subject of perhaps Goya’s most famous portrait which is here in London for the very first time.

Goya’s depiction of his friend Juan Antonio Meléndez Valdés is surprisingly modern in its simplicity and directness. It’s a fitting tribute to a man who in his roles as both poet and judge, was not afraid of expressing his strong and honest opinions. In 1797, the year Goya produced this portrait, Meléndez Valdés published a philosophical poem entitled “The Old Man’s Farewell,” in which he denounced corruption at court, and the extravagant and adulterous habits of the nobility. At a time when the Spanish monarchy was extremely eager to appear liberal and avoid a repeat of the Revolution that had transformed neighboring France, Meléndez Valdés’ poem was met with certain approval. In 1798 he was even appointed to the senior post of Judge of the Royal House and the Court. However, like so many of Goya’s liberal-minded and outspoken friends included in “Goya: The Portraits,” Meléndez Valdés soon fell from favor as the political mood changed. He eventually fled to France where he died in penury.

Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga, the four-year-old boy you see here surrounded by his pets, was the second son of one of the most ennobled aristocrats in 1780s Spain. Manuel’s father, the Duke of Altamira, held no less than seven dukedoms, 11 marquisates and 17 countships. He was also a forward-thinking man, which is probably why Manuel appears dressed in a red all-in-one suit. This was the fashion for children of liberal Spanish parents who encouraged their little ones to play rather than dress and behave like miniature adults. At the time Goya painted this portrait, placing his own calling card in the beak of the magpie Manuel holds on a piece of string, Manuel’s father was building the family a magnificent palace in Madrid. This painting and a very beautiful depiction of Manuel’s mother and baby sister also on show in “Goya: The Portraits” may have been intended to hang there. Unfortunately, financial difficulties meant the palace was never completed and little Manuel, who died at the age of eight, did not live to witness the family’s decline in wealth and power.

The young man in this portrait, painted in 1820, when the artist was in his mid-seventies, is Tiburcio Pérez y Cuervo, a young man Goya trusted as a close friend. Tiburcio was an architect whose career had been greatly assisted by his uncle, Juan Antonio Cuervo, a notable architect and Director of the Royal Academy of San Fernando. In 1818, two years before this portrait was painted, Tiburcio had been elected to the Academy himself. Like Goya, he had also gained a reputation as a noted liberal, swearing allegiance to a constitution that curtailed the power of Ferdinand VII, the much hated king. And four years after this portrait was painted, when the elderly Goya had to flee Spain to avoid arrest for his political views, Tiburcio was one of those who rallied round to help aid Goya’s escape.

Goya’s portraits chart the turbulent history of Spain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This depiction of his close friend, the politician Bernardo de Iriarte, was painted in 1797 at around the time Iriarte was made Minister of Agriculture and Commerce. It was a moment of hope for Spain when many of the foremost writers and intellectuals of the day were brought in to government to introduce reforms. Iriarte, who here strikes a pose with one hand on his hip and a book in the other, was typical of the highly cultured men given posts at the time. In addition to serving as the Vice-Protector of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, where Goya was Director of Painting, he also amassed a great library and art collection. Within five years of this portrait, however, a change in political mood saw Iriarte and many of Goya’s friends dismissed from office. Many sitters whose portraits can be seen in the exhibition suffered the same fate.

This portrait of the dashing Bartolomé Sureda y Miserol, painted around the time Goya turned 60, shows a successful young artist and engineer. Sureda had spent several years abroad studying the latest manufacturing techniques in a number of industries and was determined to bring all he learnt back to Spain. The secrets he’d learned about the manufacture of hard-paste porcelain at Sèvres in France, for instance, allowed him to transform the fortunes of the Spanish Royal Porcelain Factory when he became its Director in 1804. In the turbulent years of 1808-14, when Spain was under French occupation and locked in an armed struggle with Napoleon’s troops, Sureda converted the factory to manufacture shell casings. Napoleon considered him so vital to Spanish industry that he detained him in France. Sureda was eventually released and returned to Spain to run several other royal factories following Napoleon’s defeat. In the exhibition you’ll find this portrait hanging alongside an equally gorgeous portrait of Sureda’s young, French wife, Thérèse Louise.

Painted in 1785, this portrait shows the Countess-Duchess of Benavente. Dressed here in costly silk, (long kid gloves,) an elaborate powdered wig and an enormous feathered hat, she was considered the most distinguished woman in Madrid. But in addition to following the latest styles from Paris, she was a voracious reader and a progressive thinker. Her interest in the writings of the French philosopher Rousseau led her to take the unusual step in aristocratic circles of deciding to raise her children herself, while in public life she became one the first women admitted to the Madrid Economic Society. She and her husband, the Duke of Osuna, were also among Goya’s greatest patrons. You can find Goya’s large-scale depiction of the Duke and Duchess with their children, one of his early masterpieces, alongside this portrait inside the exhibition.

Around half of Goya's surviving portraits feature in the exhibition, with pictures lent by private and public collections from Sao Paulo to New York, and from Stockholm to Mexico, alongside important loans from Madrid's Museo Nacional del Prado. A number of the portraits have never been hung before in a public gallery, having only been on display in the private homes of the descendants of the sitters.

The exhibition explores Goya's technical, stylistic, and psychological development as a portraitist, tracing his career from his early days at the court in Madrid, as well as his appointment as the First Painter to Charles IV, while becoming the favoured portraitist of the Spanish aristocracy.

In addition to Goya's life-sized paintings on canvas, the exhibition showcases his miniatures on copper and his fine black and red chalk drawings. Of all the portraits assembled for this exhibition, one which is bound to generate great interest is the iconic 'Duchess of Alba', which has only left the United States once before, and has never previously been displayed in Britain. Lent by the Hispanic Society of America in New York, the picture, painted in 1797, shows Goya's friend and patron as a 'maja', in a black costume and 'mantilla'.

The exhibition's curator, Dr Xavier Bray, intends that ‘Goya: The Portraits’ brings about a "reappraisal of Goya's status as one of the greatest portrait painters in art history.

“His innovative and unconventional approach took the art of portraiture to new heights through his ability to reveal the inner lives of his sitters, even in his grandest and most memorable formal portraits," said Dr Bray.

Credit Suisse's audio guides will serve as an introduction to some of those lives. Credit Suisse's commitment to the arts is reflected in its long collaboration with the National Gallery, which attracts more than 6.5 million visitors a year. The partnership provides funding for the Gallery's exhibitions and educational programmes, as well as its late-night opening programme.

Garrett Curran, the CEO of Credit Suisse in the United Kingdom, said: "We are delighted to support the National Gallery's 'Goya: The Portraits', which is the first exhibition to focus solely on Goya's work as a portraitist and will give visitors a rare opportunity to witness the significant changes that took place in European political and social history as well as its key protagonists during Goya's long life."

Dr Gabriele Finaldi, Director of the National Gallery, said: "This exhibition constitutes the best possible survey of portraits by one of the most profound and incisive painters to ever put brush to canvas. Goya's gaze pierces through outward appearances and reveals human frailty, fortitude, folly, and wisdom."

Discover Goya: The Portraits at the National Gallery

Portraits made up a third of Goya's output with more than 150 works surviving today. Almost half of them will feature in Goya: The Portraits, supported by Credit Suisse, at the National Gallery.